


When Johnny comes marching home

by Naraht



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jack's death, Walker Keel reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Johnny comes marching home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short vignette about the relationship between Jack, Beverly, and Jean-Luc, told from the point of view of Walker Keel. I've always thought that the Crushers' marriage was better than many writers have portrayed it as being, and this story was written primarily to prove that. Hopefully it does a bit more, however…

It ended in tragedy. I always was afraid it would.

I don't mean anything like adultery. I don't mean that ridiculous rumour, which somehow worked its way back to me, that Wesley was really Jean-Luc's son. To tell you the truth, I never even wished that I had introduced Beverly to Jean-Luc instead of Jack. Maybe considered the idea a few times, but it wouldn't have worked. She wouldn't have given him a second glance. He wouldn't have been ready to settle down. And they would probably just have argued non-stop.

What worried me was not Jean-Luc, but the confident abandon with which Beverly and Jack had created a life together, expecting everything to go just as they had planned. Typical overachieving Starfleet officers. Their quick marriage was absolutely in character for both of them, surprising no one except perhaps Beverly's grandmother. It seemed so inevitable and so right that everyone took it without question. They were made for each other.

I began to be a little dismayed at the speed with which they decided to start a family—Wesley, it was painfully obvious, had been conceived on their honeymoon. However, the pregnancy didn't limit Beverly's ambition one bit, and after Wesley was born she went into her residency with no more than a few weeks maternity leave. She was indignant at my suggestion that she should take a year or two off to spend with her new son. And then, on top of all that, Jack accepted the posting on the _Stargazer_, pushed by Beverly herself not to turn down the opportunity, and shipped out on a five-year mission.

What a way to start a marriage. I remember going to see Beverly on Delos when Wesley was about three. She barely was able to make the time to see me: she had to promise to cover for another resident later that week, just to get the evening off. She looked exhausted. Wesley, of course, was a handful at that age too: not as active as some boys, but constantly asking questions, wanting to be read to, demanding attention.

I talked to him about starships for nearly an hour—his favourite topic then, and thereafter—and then once he went to bed, Beverly and I had a leisurely dinner. It was synthehol for us, though, since she had a practicum and rounds the next day.

"You look like you're being run ragged," I said. She was lovely as ever, of course, but she was already much more mature and steady than she had been as a medical student, a slightly worn look in her eyes and a newly acquired calm in her voice, which I had heard her use to good effect on Wesley.

"Tell me about it," she said, tucking a strand of red hair behind one ear. "Still, Dalen is such an excellent supervisor, and I'm getting so much accomplished. I know it's worth it."

"So, you don't ever wish that you'd taken leave on Caldos for a year or two?" This had been my idea. Her grandmother, I knew, would have been more than happy to take her in, and to help look after Wesley.

She half smiled at me, one corner of her mouth quirking upwards. "There are no teaching hospitals on Caldos, Walker," she said patiently.

"You know what I mean."

"I know the situation isn't ideal at the moment, but Jack and I have got it all planned. The sooner I qualify, the sooner I can get a posting. There's going to be a lot of demand once the _Galaxy_ starts accepting families on board—I'll need to have some field experience and get some good research done before then in order to be a strong candidate. But then, if everything goes well…"

"…you and Jack will be serving on the same ship, and be able to have Wesley with you."

"Exactly." The anticipation in her voice was palpable.

Things don't always go according to plan in life, though, and especially not in Starfleet. I had always been twitchy about the idea of Jack serving directly under Jean-Luc, who went to such lengths to avoid the appearance of favouring his best friend. The idea of a transfer to the Galaxy seemed like a good one to me, even if it would leave Jean-Luc, as ever, alone again.

Jack had only a year of service left on board the _Stargazer_ when that thing happened which no one can ever plan for. He died, saving six other crewmembers by his bravery. He told Jean-Luc to leave him until last, and he died. I could not have borne giving Beverly the news; Jean-Luc, somehow, did.

The next time I saw Beverly was at Jack's funeral, the funeral of a hero. Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry, posthumous. Small consolation. She stood by the grave, all in black, her red-gold hair cascading down her shoulders, her face as pale as death. She held Wesley by the hand, but looked steadily ahead as if she couldn't bear to see the reminders of Jack in his face. A widow, just barely thirty. She looked as if she felt that her life was over.

***

"Walker, don't you know that I love her?" It was clear from the tortured, reluctant admission that he didn't mean that he loved her as a sister, or indeed as the recent widow of his best friend.

Jean-Luc had come home with me after the wake, leaving Beverly with Wesley and with her grief. Neither of us had the courage to stay with her, or to think that we could offer any sort of consolation. Instead, we sat at the table in my small kitchen, with two empty bottles of wine in front of us and a third that was well on its way to joining them. We were cowards.

We had been reminiscing about Jack, about the Stargazer, about Beverly, when out of nowhere he said it. I just stopped and stared at him, feeling all of a sudden dead sober.

"Jean-Luc, you what?"

"Didn't you realise? Doesn't everyone realise?" He laughed bitterly. "I've been in love with her since the moment I met her. I've tried, how I've tried, to ignore the feelings… but now, my God, Walker… Jack died because of me. I don't know how Beverly can stand to look at me."

"Every man I know thinks that Beverly Crusher is gorgeous," I said, unconvincingly trying to ignore what he had clearly meant. I'd seen Jean-Luc gazing admiringly at Beverly before—what man wouldn't? But I had never imagined that it was anything more than a harmless attraction.

"It isn't just that." In his pain he, usually so private, was relentless, unable to forgive himself. "It's an old story. Have you ever heard the story of Bathsheba, Walker? King David sent his friend into battle, so that he could claim his wife for his own…"

"Jean-Luc, that's nonsense."

"I know—intellectually, I know that it is. But I can't help fearing that deep down, some part of me… I can't see her any more."

"You promised Jack that you would look after Beverly if anything happened to him. You owe him that as his commanding officer, if not as his friend."

"What sort of friend was I, lusting after his wife?" He paused and then said again, with heart-chilling finality, "I can't see her."

"You would see her if she asked."

He nodded, barely perceptibly, and looked away.

For some time I consoled myself by dreaming about how it all might turn out—how it would have turned out if this had been a happier world. The grieving widow, consoled by the starship captain who had long adored her; he would make a perfect stepfather to Wesley, he would get her a posting on a ship where she could keep her son with her. The dream was selfish on my part, of course. They were my two best friends in the world now that Jack was gone, and I couldn't even mention one to the other without feeling that I'd brought up his death all over again.

Beverly never knew why Jean-Luc was avoiding her, although she surely realised that he was. She never made any complaint. I asked her, from time to time, whether he had been in touch, told her to invite him for dinner when he was home on leave, told her that it would be good for Wesley to have another man around. Every excuse in the book, she used:

"He wouldn't want to spend his leave with us."

"I can't have company now."

"He's so busy."

"He was Jack's friend, not mine."

It was the same thing with him. I never again mentioned to him what he had said to me that night after the wake, but I did ask him to get in touch with Beverly, even just to talk. His excuses were just as opaque:

"I told her she could contact me if there was anything I could do."

"I would only remind her of Jack."

"You were closer to her than I was, Walker."

"It would be too much of an imposition."

I invited them both to a party once, about three years after Jack had died, without telling either of them that the other one was coming. It was a mistake. It was like having a newly divorced couple in the same room. As soon as he came through the door, Beverly's face froze, and she went silent. She made some excuse about needing to get back to Wesley, and left hurriedly before Jean-Luc had a chance even to speak to her. As for him, he never acknowledged that she had been there.

So I watched both of them retreat further into themselves. Beverly made her career and her son into her life, never went out with friends, gave up the dancing that she had once loved, did everything she could to forget about the outgoing and vivacious young woman that she had once been. Jean-Luc became ever more aloof and distant, kept a strict barrier of decorum between himself and his crew, buried himself in his Shakespeare and archaeology. Nobody would now believe that he was the man who, as a Starfleet cadet, had got into a fistfight with three Nausicaans.

It was as if I had buried three friends instead of one. That was the tragedy. It was tragedy enough.


End file.
